Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering in Early Modern London

The book looks at the career of the London playwright and prose pamphleteer Thomas Dekker between the years 1613 and 1628. The period and subject matter link the book with mainstream historical and literary topics, most particularly to the longer-term history of the Civil Wars and to popular literature and drama in the age of Shakespeare and Jonson. Pamphlets have been used as sources for topics ranging from witchcraft to popular politics, and this book seeks to inform more careful readings of such sources. Drawing on interdisciplinary historical methods and literary scholarship, it uses literary texts as a way into the culture of print and debate in early seventeenth century England. In so doing it contributes to the post-revisionist historiography of political consciousness and print cultures under the early Stuarts, as well as illuminating the career of a relatively neglected and misunderstood writer.